Tiger Babies Strike Back (29 page)

A Tiger Mom might say, “No playdates. Absolutely not.” Well, that would certainly limit the level of chaos in one's home. But as much as I enjoy a clean house, there are more important things than crumb-free countertops.

I want all my daughter's little pals to feel welcome here, and that simple desire, when broken down into details, requires more willpower, patience, and flexibility than I've ever needed to summon in school or in a paid job.

Playdates, which occur on many weekdays after school and on Saturdays, are when my daughter and her friends gleefully and unintentionally destroy our house. These afternoon sessions are by far the most difficult, ongoing tests of my mental stability, physical stamina, and psychological elasticity.

Recently, Lucy had a couple of friends over, and I had made cupcakes for them. I kept saying, “Eat over your bowl,” and “Don't drop any crumbs,” but without exception, each one, at some point, accidentally dumped her bowlful of crumbs either all over herself or sent it skittering across the floor. I was fit to be tied. Moments before, the kitchen had been perfect. I had just finished cleaning because we were having a dinner party that same night. I had spent the whole morning cooking and straightening up, and now that crumbs had rained down everywhere like ant-attracting confetti, I was ready to pitch a fit. You have no idea how much I wanted to scream, “Didn't I just warn you about that?” or “What the f*ck!”

But instead, I said, “Are you okay?”

I have noticed that in moments like these, there is always a split second when a kid looks at you, and you can just tell that in her head she is performing lightning-quick calculations as to whether or not you're gonna go Captain Insane-O on her. A wide-eyed stare, panicked facial expression, or barely perceptible flinch signals that she is ready for the worst-case scenario, your anger. If you blow your stack, trust pops like a bubble.

Of course, sometimes a kid does that one thing you said not to do
on
purpose
. I've witnessed a kid pick up his drink, make sure I was watching, and calmly and evilly turn over his cup so that the milk I just poured went splashing across the table. In that instance, he really deserved a well-timed, scathing expletive aimed his way. However, bellowing at piglets, petulant or just clumsy, doesn't help anyone.

In any case, after I swept up the cupcake messes, my daughter and one of her friends ran upstairs to play, and I stayed downstairs with the other pal, and we watched a Harry Potter movie together.

Now this girl was a very big fan of this series and had already seen all the movies several times. She wielded the pause and fast-forward buttons of the remote control with her nimble fingers so quickly that the film went by in staggered snippets that were impossible to track with the human eye. But she was so excited to tell me every detail of every article of clothing, set design, green screen technological moment, and plot deviation that I was forced to adjust my mentality to the level of an eleven-year-old girl's brain soaked in soda and sprinkled liberally with Pixy Stix.

It was okay. I could've fought with her but instead I told myself,
Feel the force of the brain scramble flowing through you
. I recalibrated myself to chatterbox light speed. Simultaneously, I ate some potato chips to distract myself from the thumping, crashing noises that were coming from upstairs.

People! This is what living with children is like.

After a while, I went upstairs to see what Lucy and her friend were up to. The carpet was littered with shredded toilet paper (clean) and tiny toy parts. Disassembled, minuscule bits of Japanese erasers were scattered everywhere. Also, a giant bucket of plastic Perler beads had been dumped and mashed into the carpet pile, and various stuffed animals, books, and other detritus of childhood had exploded across the beds and every square foot of the floor.

I stood there and winced in pain at the sight. As I collected my thoughts, all I said was, “Okaaaay.”

I couldn't imagine how I or we were ever going to put everything back in order, but in those few moments in which I paused, I could see that they were in the middle of creating their own movie that they had carefully written and staged. They had a script, had set up all the scenes, and were now filming with the video setting of our digital camera. It was called
Evil Taco's Revenge!
and starred a rather funny-looking, stuffed chinchilla named Chacho in a main role as a devious caterer.

How could I put a stop to such a thing? I couldn't—and wouldn't!

In the course of their elaborate play, these two cherubs had upended every container of toys, socks, pens, paper, and knickknacks in sight. Everything was mashed together in the scattered wake of their destruction. What had taken me five hours to clean that morning had been obliterated by them in twenty minutes.

It took all my strength not to lose my mind. I could feel the imaginary steam ready to blow out my ears like in a cartoon.

And yet. I stopped myself. I reminded myself that they were doing exactly what children should be doing. This freedom to play as children would influence them for the rest of their lives and would lay the foundation for all their future work as adults. This inventive play was expanding the crevices of their mind, like the universe expands, creating new spiral galaxies where once there was only black nothingness.

I resisted with all my might the urge to scream. Besides, in deep space, no one can hear you anyway.

The chaos was not entirely destruction, but creation. They had literally made a holy mess. The chaos was a result of their sacred play.

Spills can be cleaned. Rugs can be vacuumed and sheets washed. Sure I want a clean home, and I would love it if clothes that I folded an hour ago actually stayed in a neat pile.

But look! How could I argue with their excitement and pure focus as they carefully measured out their screen shots and exclaimed, “Turn Chacho to the left! Okay, wait . . . chain him up in Mardi Gras beads! Now roll out the toilet paper . . .” and so forth.

I left them alone. These nine-year-olds were creating new worlds. These worlds were portals to their future, and their dreams. This imaginative play was their work. And they were creating a wonderful, lively, brilliant universe along with their mess.

And in the mix, eventually math homework still got done. Top grades were still achieved. I did clean a little more, but it was worth it to allow them their freedom. I mean, how many years left do children have to explore the far reaches of their nonsensical, quirky, malleable minds? Of course, hopefully, that creativity would never stop, even far into adulthood. That would be the most beautiful ability of all, to always have hearts and minds bursting with exuberant ideas. If only all our years could continue to be filled with that kind of self-generating happiness and wonderment. By allowing kids to play uninterrupted, if we can give our kids the gift of never feeling stuck in life, well, dang, we all deserve that.

37

Now that I've ventured out from my separate cage, I've found female friends who can be described as neither Tiger Moms nor cougars. All are hardworking women, and each maintains her own independence in the face of balancing professional and domestic lives, personhood and motherhood. Any one of these remarkable women would lift a freaking car off my child if need be. And they would gently send me home if they ever found me in public wearing head-to-toe nonironic leopard print.

If I were a Tiger Mom, I don't think I'd ever have gotten close enough to these friends to know that we all deal with the same challenges every day. We are each doing all that needs to be done: lugging tons of heavy backpacks and groceries, making breakfasts and packing lunches, helping with homework, and coordinating multiple schedules. Someone is always jostling our bodies, ripping open the shower curtain to talk to us, pilfering that special snack we were saving in the fridge, or crashing our computers with games and “inappropriate” movies.

Resisting the Tigerish tendency to think I can do everything all on my own has been a years-long process. I am proud to say that I don't feel in competition with my other mother-friends. I feel cooperative.

But this trust did not happen immediately. Because I hadn't had a lot of experience with close relationships up to this point, and had mostly just confined myself to my isolating Chinese box, I wasn't quite sure how to go about feeling comfortable with a new group of friends. And even when I was giving lavish, weekly dinner parties and had stepped over the line to the Dark Side of Perfect Wife, I was still using that posture as dazzle camouflage. I may have looked like I was inviting people in, even as I was simultaneously keeping them at arm's length.

Without being too conscious of it, I must have been figuring that I would only show people what I wanted them to see. If I then ended up getting hurt, I could take solace in the fact that they never knew the real me.

It was as if my insides were constructed like the
Titanic
. The ship consisted of five compartments that could fill up with water, and if the hull took a direct hit and one part filled up, the other four were still intact to keep the vessel afloat. The engineering strategy was to avoid a huge gouge across all five sections that would result in a nonsurvivable situation like the one that sank that ill-fated ship. Letting people only see one side of me was like filling up just one quadrant of my heart. If moving here and making these friends turned out to be an epic fail, I could still survive. At least, that was my initial thinking.

But slowly, ever so incrementally, I did allow myself to let in one friend at a time. I discovered that we are all in the same boat. We are all bailing water with Dixie cups. My friends showed me I was not alone in this endeavor, or in my loneliness. I did not have to pretend I was a perfect anything. I could be myself and feel welcome. And loved, for real.

Parenthood is like volunteering for an overnight field trip that lasts eighteen-plus years. I feel lucky to have discovered other sane adults who are my cochaperones. Boxes must be hauled, car rides must be arranged, and we are each forever picking up the slack. Figuratively, and sometimes literally, we do the heavy lifting, and we put down the hammer.

As mothers, we pick up kids, and in between driving everyone everywhere, we are also forced to pick ourselves up over and over again. We coax splinters out of soft little feet, soothe inexplicably hurt feelings, and wipe away hot tears rolling down cheeks, sometimes our very own.

We are the providers of hearth and home, even though we are making things up as we go along. But thank goodness we are not in separate cages, but instead, we slog through the trenches together.

For instance, a few of my friends and I recently took our daughters to a kid birthday party. It was at a bowling alley on a Saturday afternoon, and needless to say, none of us really wanted to go. However, we were all willing to throw ourselves under the bus for the sake of our children's happiness.